Resilience is All You Need

Bad news: You will inevitably make mistakes and encounter temporary setbacks in your research. Good news: No, you do not get swallowed up by them.

Resilience, a Researcher’s Trait

Everyone gets knocked down

What matters is whether you get back up and keep going.

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” - Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

And this is called resilience. A trait so foundational to every aspect of life — research work included.

The Myth of Perfection in Scientific Research

Too often, we idolize success stories without acknowledging the long trail of failures behind them. We scroll past rejection letters, botched experiments, lost datasets, and stalled drafts. But they’re all there, quietly laying the foundation for every breakthrough.

In research, setbacks are not only common, they’re essential.

In fact, one of the most unexpected examples comes from Geoffrey Hinton’s early career (at least to me, I mean, we’re talking about THE Geoffrey Hinton!).

In the 1970s, amidst what became known as the “AI winter”, his PhD supervisor at Edinburgh dismissed neural networks. They were viewed as a failed concept.

Even after earning his PhD, Hinton moved across institutions — Sussex, UC San Diego, Carnegie Mellon — often because funding for neural nets was limited in the UK.

Decades later, after helping launch modern AI at Google, he stepped away in 2023 to freely warn of its existential risks, openly expressing regret over unintended consequences.

I was surprised when I first read his story. It’s hard to imagine such an important figure in the field of AI was rejeceted funding so many times, and even spent a few years working as a carpenter because he couldnt’ find a research topic he was passionate about. But beyond that initial shock, I came to an important realization: setbacks are completely normal.

At Cornell, I was surrounded by many high-achieving peers, so when I began experiencing health issues or hitting roadblocks in my research, I assumed something was wrong with me - that I wasn’t keeping up.

The perfectionist image of an ideal researcher in my mind was purely fictional. Even those we consider the most accomplished, like Geoffrey Hinton, faced profound setbacks. But he didn’t give up! His own PhD advisor at Edinburgh urged him to abandon neural networks, yet he persisted, famously replying,

“Give me another six months and I’ll prove it works”.

Setbacks aren’t optional, nor are they avoidable; they happen, and yes, they can hurt.

But I now encourage people to view them differently, not to dismiss or invalidate them. I believe setbacks sharpen our questions, force us to adapt, and push us to grow in ways comfort simply cannot.

Every “failure” is just a training data point in disguise :)

Building Resilience, Not Just Enduring

Resilience doesn’t mean grinding through everything with clenched teeth.

To me, it’s more about knowing when to pause, take a breath, reflect, and then find your way forward again. It’s not just about pushing through, it’s also about being kind to yourself in the process.

Here are a few things that have helped me build resilience over time:

Talk about your struggles with people you trust. Heavy emphasis on people you trust. Your trusted friends, family members, mentors. You name it! It definitely helps to normalize the messiness. In my experience, opening up about my struggles often encouraged others to share their own. It reminded me that I wasn’t alone in facing challenges in research, and that sense of connection made all the difference.
Try to see mistakes as signals, not verdicts. They’re part of the learning. Instead of ruminating over the mistakes you made, first accept that fact that the actions were done, then set up a system to avoid repeating them in the future .

(e.g. I’ve always struggled with retaining verbal information, which made research seminars and lectures incredibly challenging. I often walked away with little I could apply to my own work. At first all I did was complain, why couldn’t I just remember everything like everybody else?! Later, I realized wallowing in the sorrow of inability doesn’t contribute to progress, so I built a system: using transcription softwares to capture content, jotting down key themes during the talk, and then revisiting everything afterwards to synthesize pieces of information into clear, actionable bullet points tailored to my projects. This might not be the most efficient solution to my problem, but it has helped me tremendously so far. )

(An example of the post-lecture notes I took for applied functional analysis. This ended up being extremely helpful for understanding key concepts in a later project.)
Celebrate small wins! They matter more than we think. You debugged a script that’s been stopping you from continuing to the next step for days? Great! Give yourself a pat on the back and take a short break! Resting your eyes is not gonna take forever.

And maybe most importantly, give yourself permission to rest, especially when you feel like you haven’t earned it. That’s usually when you need it most. Your health is the most important thing in your life, and this is not an exaggeration. People tend to realize this only when they start to develop health problems.

You’re Still in the Game

If you’re feeling discouraged, maybe you missed a deadline, got harsh feedback, or are simply tired, know that this is part of the journey. You’re not behind. You’re becoming resilient.

That strength will outlast your resume, your GPA, your title. These things don’t last forever.

It’s kind of like how your SAT score doesn’t matter as much once you’ve entered college, once you enter a new stage, certain qualifications that got you there exit your life.

But not giving up on your work despite difficulties? This quality stays and permeates all aspects of your life.

So the next time something unexpected happens, that completely changes the trajectory of your project, or sometimes even your life, remember:

It’s okay. Things happen.

You’re building your resilience, as a researcher, and also as a person. And it’s not easy.

Don’t forget why you are doing this, maybe you want to help push the frontier of human knowledge by a teeny tiny bit; maybe you want to be a teacher and pass on the torch of human curiosity; or maybe you simply made a promise to your younger self that you want to one day create things that are new, meaningful, and helpful to others.

These are things that mean way more than small mistakes you made, so don’t let them stop you from fulfilling your promise.

Keep going! Because resilience is all you need.

Nicole Hao, Jul 3, 2025, NYC.

Written on July 3, 2025